


Hola Weg and Pine

by undercovercaptain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angsting and lamenting, F/M, Let the pining commence!, Stannis has gone off hunting in the Wolfswood, but all will be well, winter is here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:55:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercovercaptain/pseuds/undercovercaptain
Summary: She glanced at his neck, to the place where the skin of his throat vanished under his collar. This distance between them made her dizzy, the lack of touch, the need to correct it. Blood rushed in her ears, her composure loosening.
Relationships: Stannis Baratheon/Sansa Stark
Comments: 44
Kudos: 139





	1. Distance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed writing 'Falling, Catching', and wanted to write something in a similar vein but a bit more angsty and pining ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_I wondered with hope on my Wulf’s wide wanderings,_ **

**_when there was rainy weather and I sat weeping_ **

– Wulf and Eadwacer –

***

She had been too long at her solar’s window, her ladies having left some time ago. Outside, the birds too had since flown away above the treetops, the sun slipping behind grey clouds, and the light fallen flat. The afternoon had so quickly descended into dusk, evidence of winter’s stronghold.

Turning away from the frosted casement, she began to busy herself, storing away her half-finished mending and lighting candles in an attempt to call back the light. Lost in her domesticity, she could well have pretended as though this day would end like any other. But in her mind she was already following a worn trail through the wolfswood, grass crunching brittlely underfoot, the leaves of the oaks and ironwoods candied with frost.

That night in bed, she felt a heightened sense of his absence, the lack of a solid weight beside her, the absent scent of leather and spruce boughs, the want of his slow, tired breathing. Before his departure, she remembered reaching out, thinking to touch his shoulder, but instead had lowered her arm and laid in the darkness for a long while, staring at his back.

“Do you think we’ll make it through winter?” she asked.

He didn’t answer and she thought him asleep.

But then he did, and she wondered now if it was weariness or emotion that had made his voice gravelly.

“We don’t have much choice do we?”

***

**_The tumbling snows bind up the earth,_ **

**_the clash of winter, when the darkness comes._ **

– The Wanderer –

***

Down in the holloway so close was the latticework of leaves and branches, so tall the sides of the earthen banks, that the early morning light penetrated its depths only in thin, silvery lances. Slowly, their hunting party progressed onwards, up the bed of the roadway; any noise they or their horses made thudded into the snow-dusted banks, becoming lost.

Over the course of centuries the passage of hooves and feet had worn away the floor of these forest paths, grooving ruts into the exposed stone. Most had started out as drove roads, paths to crofters’ villages, some forged by the First Men as boundary ditches. They were landmarks that spoke of habit rather than suddenness, like creases in the hand, or the wear on the stone sill of a doorstep or stair. A place and a way forward: a consequence of tradition, or repeated action, an archive of past customs.

“Jory Cassel once brought my brothers here to fish for trout.”

The boy turned in his saddle to stare at him expectantly, interrupting a multitude of quiet musings. _Eyes just like your sister’s._

“I must’ve been a babe then, for I don’t remember,” he continued, voice reedy with youth. “And I don’t remember his face, Jory’s I mean. He died with my father, I think. In King’s Landing.”

The boy was like that sometimes, morosely silent, and then full of morbid ponderings, where any listener would do.

He released a non-committal murmur in response, casting his gaze back steadfastly ahead of them, eyes briefly lifting.

It was clear from the mood of the sky that a big fall was coming. Dark clouds had started to hood the earth from the east, and a scatter of thin sleet had begun to descend. _Damned cold._ His cheeks and nose buzzed with the chill as he thought of home. Of high stone walls. Of a fire burning in the hearth. Of Sansa, warm beneath the furs.

***

**_Given to Óðinn, myself to myself,_ **

**_on that tree that rose from roots,_ **

**_that no man ever knows._ **

– Hávamál –

***

Brushing up against the branches and leaves of the godswood, the snow fell from them like sugar. Sunlight was threatening to come up fully from behind the distant hills, but its light was weak and silvery, and not much comfort at all.

Stepping from tree to tree, she heard a clatter, like the sound of gravel being thrown onto a wooden table. Two young ravens were at play, hopping from the low branches of a soldier pine down onto the snow and then flapping back up again, chattering to one another in a familial manner. On the ground, they walked with a nodding motion, their feet wide apart, as if trying to keep their balance. They tilted their heads, and watched her watching them, the light of the snow giving a faint indigo sheen to their feathers and lending beads of whiteness to their eyes.

As she stood there, they walked out into a spot of fresh snow, and began to circle one another playfully, each keeping a steady distance from the other, like two kings on a cyvasse board. _Only one king now_ , she thought absently, as she picked her way towards the weeping heart tree, to take a seat within the twisted cradle of its roots.

Around her the trees moved in the wind, the big oaks holding their round shape, their leaves bustling in circles, whilst the thinner, younger pines quivered and shook, swaying in arcs and lines. With her eyes closed, she listened to their whispers and sighs, lost in reveries.

And she thought of him. Thought of him out in the wolfswood, with her brother and their hunting party. Thought of him cold and steadfast, sitting at campfires and frowning at bawdy songs. Thought of his face, his clothes, even his lips, all chilled. Chilled by snow and frosted air.

***

**_Garm now howls loud before Looming-cave,_ **

**_the bond will break, and the ravenous one run_ **

– Völuspá –

***

Firelight flickered off the walls of the holloway and on the frosted hedge canopy above them, setting complicated shadows moving in the remaining leaves. As they sat in the thickening dark, some talking, some silent, the day seemed to convene itself around the furnace-point of the flames.

Basking in the glimmer of attentive eyes, the wolf pup would often tell stories of wild days spent on Skagos, before his recovery at the hands of the Onion Knight. On this evening, eager eyes gleaming, he spoke of a time when he had been nearly shot at by a passing hunter who had mistaken him for a bear. The conclusion of the story was not the boy’s outrage at having arrows set upon him, but rather his delight at having been mistaken for an animal. Little Bear the men began to call him, until his tempered flared, red as his hair.

“Not a bear,” he groused, his great black beast howling in the distance, long and plaintive. “A _wolf_.”

“Mind your wildness, boy,” his king replied, brow heavy and face cast in shadow. “For nothing that is so wild can know of duty.”

High above the trees’ canopy, two stars were falling, near parallel, down the long dark slope of the sky. Deeper and deeper they would go on, boots stiff with cold and fingers numb, each day waking before the dawn.

Later, sheltered from the snow, flashes of tree branches, game trails and white cliffs swam behind his tired eyes, the images imprinted. But when leaden sleep finally came they slipped away, sinking, like rocks in a pool.

And he dreamt of her. Of Sansa on her side, with her face towards the window, his body pressed against her. Sansa with his arms around her, anchored, as she gave herself away, as he fitted them both together. Slow. Warm. Wearied with tenderness. With lips against her neck, quickening, shuddering, emptied. Alone in winter’s darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, it's so tough being hot for your partner but they're far away and not knowing if they reciprocate... Stay tuned!
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – Holloway: from the Old English 'hola weg,' meaning a ‘harrowed path,' a ‘sunken road.’  
> – Poetic quotations from Old English: Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wanderer.  
> – Poetic quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Hávamál (The lay of the High One), Völuspá (The prophecy of the seeress).
> 
> Comments, as always, are much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	2. Await

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_Wind-cool he is called, who is father of Winter,_ **

**_but Sweetness that of Summer_ **

– Vaftrúðnismál –

***

The sun was full in the eastern sky, and in the west was the ghost of the moon. Each high above the snow capped hills and mountains, they shared the white of the sky: the sun burning orange, the moon its cold copy. Not so distantly, metal chimed against metal, ringing out from the smithy, as horses nestled in their stalls, dark eyes peering out onto the frosted courtyard beyond.

“There hasn’t been a day where I haven’t thought of her. When I…” his voice tailed off, hot breath clouding the air as he laughed, hollow and wearisome.

“She knows it,” she replied gently, “and if not…you will tell her.”

Beside her, he smiled sombrely, eyes wet but not weeping, as they walked quietly together across the frost-hardened earth, freshly swept of snow. Cast down from the mountains and far off glaciers, a gusting wind blew through the trees of the godswood, then into the yard, stirring her light auburn hair. She turned her gaze away from him, cheeks pink with cold, chafing her gloved hands to draw back the warmth.

“I wrote for her forgiveness, in the Wolf’s Den,” he continued, drawing her eyes back to him, to that honest, weathered face; his body weighed down by more than the mass of fur that rested about his shoulders. “I was a better smuggler than a knight, a better knight than a King’s Hand, and a better King’s Hand than a husband. But she…she is the best of women.”

From the godswood the wind rushed and swayed, the scent of evergreen and resin drifting, playing out in the solemn courtyard like a distant song. _A song I would know anywhere._ With eyes briefly closed, she thought of the soldier pines, standing in their grove, clouded bursts of fine feathery needles, soaring so high that they merged with the haze of the silver white sky, lost in the northern mist. With age, the pine bark splits, like smooth scales ruptured, its surface deeply fissured. Scarred but still growing strong.

“You are better than you think, Ser Davos.”

The thud of their boots and her gown’s soft rustle kept them company as they passed beneath the bridge that connected the Great Keep to the armoury; the black stain of scorch marks still present on some of the salvaged beams.

“And…” she paused, chancing a look across at him, “and you love her.”

He smiled then, a proper smile, their eyes meeting as the East Gate came into sight, and she felt the corners of her own mouth upturn. For there was something thankful and dear in his smile, in the smile of someone whose council you trust, which made the raw morning seem warm, if only for a moment.

“Aye, my queen,” he yielded, “I’ve failed at many things…but never that.”

***

**_Dusky shadows darken. It snowed from the north,_ **

**_binding the earth in ice. Hail fell from the ground,_ **

**_coldest of grains._ **

– The Seafarer –

***

They awoke before sunrise. Stretching and stamping his feet, he blew into his cupped hands as the wolf pup shook himself warm in a little dance, his moon-shadow jigging with himself against the snow. Laughter echoed in the belly of the holloway, the men amused by his antics, their breath steaming like hot springs, their unruly beards frosted with ice.

“How fares my sister, do you think?”

Rickon came to stand beside him, expectant face smooth with youth, his bare cheeks ruddy and his hair wild.

“Well enough,” he answered gruffly, still feeling the stiffness of the cold deep inside the joints of his legs.

“She might have come with us, my lord. I could have shown her how to trap and fish! Next time, we shall ask—”

“Your sister is a fine woman,” he interrupted, frowning at the boy, “she might enjoy her time in your godswood, but I doubt very much that she would like sleeping amidst the snow and the leaves.”

“She might!” The boy pursed his mouth, brow heavy and stubborn.

He huffed out a brusque laugh, the puff of breath from his nose turning white in the air, as he turned away from him, chilled limbs in search of warmth.

Whilst they broke their fast on fire-roasted hare, all huddled around the flames, he watched dawn, polar and silent, break over the tops of the snow-covered trees. The first sign was a pale blue band, like a strip of fine steel, tight across the eastern horizon. The band began to glow a dull orange, as they started to mount their horses and set off on their way. With this morning light, a new country shaped itself out of the darkness, the trees standing clearer and straighter, as the sun rose, elliptical at first, and red. From his horse, he looked out pensively over a land that was and was not his, with the cold creeping into him, and the white mountains receding into a whiter sky.

About half an hour later, the sky had become a steady tall blue. The early sunlight warmed his cheeks, the forest now bursting with birdsong.

It was then that he saw her. A little fur-cloaked girl stood in the trees just beyond their party, peering out from behind a soldier pine, watching. 

***

**_Ancient is this earth-hall:_ **

**_I am entirely longing—_ **

– The Wife’s Lament –

***

Pale sunlight filtered in through the casements, their diamonds of cold cut glass, held in place by hammered iron, hazy and clouded from the heat of the room. Much of its contents had changed, either lost or destroyed, yet still its granite walls stood tall, its hearth still inviting, carved with the faces of leafy green men, vines entwining. Along the west facing wall a fire crackled and flickered, its presence in the room faint, like the sound of beating wings.

“You have travelled a great distance, my lady.” She looked across the table into the other woman’s eyes and smiled gently. “I would not have taken offence if you had wished to rest more or see to your sons and husband.”

Her companion reached out to where her hands lay folded, covering them with her own. “Many kisses and tears have been shared, with many more to come, I’m sure… But no, I wished to thank my lady for her kindness, for this roof above our heads. They say this winter will be a long one, and I know my husband is needed here. I thank you, truly.”

“It is no matter,” she answered, cheeks warm and voice suddenly shy. “It was a selfish want really, for I longed to meet you.”

“And I you.”

Her slim fingers, like the cool, pale bones of a bird, rested gently in Marya’s hands, as the older woman looked back at her fondly.

“You are young,” she said quietly, calm eyes creased lightly at the corners.

“Yes.”

“Young but wise, I think." With an easy affection Sansa’s hand was smoothed over by a soft, heavy palm. “He does not suffer fools lightly, your husband, does he?”

“No,” she answered, her laughter light and unexpected. “No, he does not.”

A gentle knocking sounded then against the solar’s large oak door, followed by a timid maidservant with a tray of fresh bread, soft cheese and potted crab from White Harbour. The girl curtseyed sweetly before leaving, feet swift and light. Yet no sooner was the food brought to Sansa’s lips, than it was hurriedly put down. With a worried look, she turned her head away, face suddenly ashen.

“Is something wrong?”

Without answering, she leapt to her feet, nearly catching her gown against the edge of the dark hewn table.

“My lady?”

She saw a washstand, tucked away in a corner, and ran to it, too nauseas to feel any relief. Paralysed with horror, she hunched over the stand, emptying her stomach. Her throat burned as she coughed, the sour smell assaulting her nose, her head throbbing.

In an instant Marya was behind her, gently squeezing her elbow; an expression of friendship and sympathy that made her want to weep. “Here, drink this,” she told her softly, offering her a cup of cool lemon water, as her hand rose to smooth back Sansa’s hair.

With her eyes fixed on the metal cup, she rinsed her mouth. Her cheeks felt warm with embarrassment and her body strangely faint. With a shaky hand, she brushed away a strand of hair that was stuck to her lip.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know…I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no,” the other woman hushed, “there’s no need to be sorry.”

She took her arm then and led her to a stone-carved window seat, where the air was cooler. “Poor love,” she murmured, frowning, once more reaching for her hand and stroking it very lightly.

As though her touch was the last straw, hot tears began to spill out of Sansa’s eyes. “I’m sorry…” she sniffed, unable to bring herself to look back at her.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. Let’s just sit here a moment, hmm?”

But then she was relinquishing her hold on her hand, rising as though to leave. The warmth fled Sansa’s body, suddenly chilled and woefully abandoned. Eyes red-rimmed, she watched as Marya stepped quietly into the corridor, the bowl now in her hands. She listened as she called out to a passing servant, their voices fading to a murmur. With a hand over her eyes, she slumped back in her seat, relishing the bite of cold glass against her cheek.

***

**_Axe-age, blade-age, swords are split;_ **

**_wind-age, wolf-age, before the world crumbles:_ **

**_no one will spare another._ **

– Völuspá –

***

The path to the upper ground switchbacked sharply from the edge of a frozen lakeshore through tall oak trees, old course snow laying in rows between them and in rings around their bases. Looking to his east and north, all he could see was white. Distant snowfields, on mountains whose names he did not know, gave off bright concussions of winter light.

The girl slowed and seemed reluctant to go on. Without looking back at them, she stopped and pointed toward a snow-covered heap beneath a great spruce tree, its large boughs and immense trunk giving off a sheltered feeling to the narrow valley.

“What is it?”

The girl did not answer, only continued to point.

Stepping ahead of his men, he walked past her to the white heap and knelt down to brush away some of the snow. Beneath it, he saw a man’s neck where dark hair met a woodsman’s wool coat. His breathing stilled, then began anew.

“My king…” The knight’s voice faded, his tone uncertain.

Cautiously, he put his hand to the broad shoulder, the feel of it hard as an ironwood log, cold and frozen to the ground. With little outward emotion, he dusted the snow off the face and head, then off his side and chest. When he rose to his feet, the windless cold burnt the edges of his face. Treading slowly around the corpse, he could hear little else but the swish of his uneven breathing, the crunch his foot made when it broke through a crust of hard snow, and the wood-like groans of ice sinking as he stepped down onto it.

The body lay on its side, curled up like a child. His milky eyes, sunk back into his skull, stared blankly ahead and ice crystals grew on his face, clothes, and hair, shining brittlely against his beard.

Then he remembered the girl. He turned and she was there, now at his elbow, peering down at the frozen man.

“Who is he?”

“My papa,” she whispered.

He looked into her eyes, and it was like watching water gather on lake ice. No sloppy dribble, no sobs, only a quiet pool resting on blue.

“I pulled on his arm and said, _Please, papa. Please._ But he wouldn’t come. He only sat in the snow.”

“Why wouldn’t he move?”

The girl’s chin trembled as she spoke: “He told me his drink kept him warm, but I knew it wouldn’t. I wanted to make him warm. I held his hands and then I held his face, just like this.”

The girl reached down and cupped the dead man’s cheeks in her small hands with a tenderness that only came from a daughter’s touch. Watching her silently, he thought of Shireen, thought of her hand pressed into his, as she wished him well on their journey.

“I tried, but he was colder and colder and colder.”

Stannis went to one knee beside the corpse and caught the strong smell of liquor. A leather flask was clenched in a frozen claw of a hand. A bilious feeling squirmed in the pit of his stomach, like a thing done wrong. _How could a man do this, drink himself to death in front of his child?_

“Why couldn’t I make him warm?”

Still on one knee, he reached up and took hold of her slim shoulders.

“You aren’t to blame,” he said firmly, his eyes holding hers. “This is not your fault. He was a man grown, and no one could have saved him but himself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it wasn't clear...she pregnant.
> 
> Nerd Side Notes:
> 
> – Green Man details on the fireplace:
> 
> An architectural motif (both secular and ecclesiastical), based in folklore, that can have many variations, where the face is made of, or completely surrounded by leaves. Often associated with fertility, rebirth and nature. In Germany, Iceland, and England, depictions of the Green Man could have been inspired by deities such as Freyr or Oðinn, as both have many attributes of the later Green Men from throughout Europe. Another explanation for the disembodied head is that it is Mímir’s head from Norse Mythology...but there are many possibilities/other gods people have found connections to :)
> 
> \- Poetic Quotations from Old English: The Seafarer, The Wife's Lament.  
> – Poetic Quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Vaftrúðnismál (The lay of Vaftrúðnir), Völuspá (The prophecy of the seeress).
> 
> Comments, as always, are much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	3. Shiver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments :) I'm really enjoying writing this kind of structure with the shorter chunks of pov – so much so I've had to add another chapter!
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_The fir-tree fades that stands in the grove,_ **

**_its bark and needles give no shelter;_ **

**_so it is for the man whom nobody loves,_ **

**_how shall he live for long?_ **

– Hávamál –

***

A number of their party escorted the girl, with her father’s body hauled upon a makeshift sled, higher up the ridge, their snow-crusted boots grappling against the rock and ice. He had left his good-brother behind with the rest of their men and horses, placated by the knowledge that there was shelter close to hand and that his great beast was still near; a distant, looming black mass against the white and the trees. _Gods forbid I let that foolish boy freeze._

Up on the ridge, a blizzard was beckoning, building within the hour, the brittle reeds that poked up from the ice flickering wildly in the wind. Soon the weather drove them to seek their own shelter in a shallow cave, hid behind the grey-green branches of a towering sentinel tree. But they were not alone, for beneath the stony overhang was the orange glow of a fire, and the sound of at least two voices, murmuring quietly together.

“Come in and warm yourselves,” a man called out, his northern voice rough but welcoming. “There’s stone enough to keep all our heads dry.”

Outside, hail had begun to fall in a long shower of rugged spheres the size of peppercorns. As the evening edged closer, the hail started to turn into snow, the texture of it like salt, hissing as it fell down upon the ice.

As they stepped further into the cave, he recognised one of the inhabitants to be Morgan Liddle, a man of the mountains clans, the clasp of his squirrel-skin cloak made of gold and bronze, and wrought in the shape of a pinecone. Eyes alighting in mutual recognition, the large, bald headed man grinned back at him toothily, beckoning them closer.

“Haven’t seen a king in these parts for centuries, yet now it seems we can’t stop meeting. Move over Dorri, make some room beside the fire.”

“Fortunate indeed,” he replied, though his face remained grim and his voice gruff; “For this girl here says her father was a woodsman and hunter in the service of Clan Liddle. Do you know her?”

The child had stayed close by his side the entire journey, ever at his elbow, valiantly trudging on alongside his party’s purposeful strides. At her mention, she slipped out from behind him; head lowered solemnly, her braided hair damp and her cheeks still red with cold. Tired and calm, any wariness she might have felt had long drained out of her.

“Brida, is it?” Middle Liddle no longer smiled, and instead a grave look crossed his face. “And what of your papa, child? What of Finan?”

“Dead,” Stannis answered curtly, as his small band of men took their seats beside the fire, chilled and bone weary. “The cold and drink took him.”

Liddle blew out a ragged breath, rubbing a meaty hand across his beard, as his companion muttered a low curse, solemn eyes cast down.

They spent that evening together, sharing amongst themselves oatcakes and blood sausage, as the fire crackled, casting dancing shadows against the cave’s walls. He must have slept, for some hours later he woke to find that the snow had stopped and the cloud cover had thinned away. From the mouth of the cave, a winter moon was visible above the mountains: just a little off full, with a hangnail missing on the right side, and stars swarming around it. Across from him, Morgan Liddle sat whittling away at a piece of wood, features flickering in the light of the still burning fire.

“Damned thing,” he muttered quietly, not meeting his gaze, though from what he said next he seemed aware of his king’s presence: “The wife died in the birthing bed, not long since, the babe too. Tis a hard thing for a man to bear.”

He remained silent for a while, as an unfamiliar anxiety gripped him, prickling at him, like a cold hand on warm skin. Glancing to his left, he saw the girl, _Brida,_ sleeping soundly at the side of the other clansman, her small face bathed in firelight and a large fur cloak draped about her shoulders.

“Does the child have no other family?” he questioned at last.

“Dorri here is the mother’s brother. And there is a grandmother also…if the grief doesn’t kill her.” Liddle smiled wanly to himself. “Ours is a hard life and the ground is tough to dig these days. A fire will have to be set to thaw it. Aye, a winter grave is hard earned, but it will come. It will come.” He lifted his flinty-eyed gaze to stare back at him, pausing his work. “So rest easy, milord, we’ll see them both right.”

He nodded. “My men and I shall leave you come dawn.”

“Aye, and then back home is it? Back to Ned’s red-haired girl.”

He bristled strangely in defence, his jaw clenching. “I would have us kill something first, for that was our purpose in braving this damned cold.”

The other man laughed lowly, whittling away at his stick anew. “You speak like a southron, but I know there’s a touch of the north in you too.”

***

**_Woe be to that one who must wait for_ **

**_their beloved with longing._ **

– The Wife’s Lament –

***

It was approaching midday, though the light had seeped out of the sky, the clouds a pearlescent grey and the snow a pale silver. Despite the hour, she could not get up. Her body refused orders; or rather her mind had given up issuing them. Instead, she lay staring at the high-beamed ceiling, mired in the certainty that if she were to move to a vertical position then surely the contents of her stomach would be spilled across the floor.

With a drawn in breath, she turned to lie on her side, her long legs askew, one arm beneath her head, the other pressed pensively against her still flat belly.

A few hours earlier, caught between a deep sleep and waking, she had dreamt that she was in the midst of a snowstorm. Snow had fallen and gusted around her. She held out her hands and the snowflakes had landed on her open palms. As they touched her skin, they melted into tiny, naked new-borns, each babe no bigger than a fingernail. But then the wind had swept them away, once again just snowflakes among a flurry of thousands.

In the depths of this long winter, the prospect of a child had always seemed so distant to her, akin to the coming of spring: a far-flung future, so delicately attainable, as though it were a spider’s web they were weaving, her hopes and wants made of gossamer thread. _But it has happened. Whether I feel ready for it or not, it has happened._

Perhaps it was an indulgence to do so, to draw her mind back, back to the last time, now some weeks past. But at present she felt too sick of heart and stomach to deny herself the painful comfort. The memory of his touch, so restrained and precise, she could hardly bear it. How she had shivered, though not with the cold. How she had felt his hand, the roughened pads and the warm palm, invading her skirts, to smooth over the skin of her inner thigh. How he had knelt, stripped her, spread her, looked down at her, so grave and for what felt like an age. How in a rush he had lifted her hips and breached her, made her cry out in surprise. How he had watched himself withdraw, slowly, right to the tip, until he plunged in again with a groan. How she had looked down at her body to see it: the appearing and disappearing. How she had closed her eyes tight, face red. How she had shifted to wind her legs around him. How he had leant down to kiss her, panting. How her hands had grappled at his sweat-slicked back, as he began to move urgently, stirring her in great circles. How she had felt like falling apart, like a fire catching. How he had quickened, quickened. How his lips had felt against her neck, beard rough. How his body had clenched above her like fist. How it had looked as though it hurt him. How he had collapsed after, skin glazed by firelight, his heart thumping so hard against her breastbone, before he rolled away. And how hers had beat just the same.

When he came to her chambers that night, figure a tall shadow in the adjoining doorway, she hadn’t protested. She never did. Because she liked it, needed it even, like a fire on a cold night, like food in her belly. But his attentions were rare; so many nights spent absent, passed in waning candlelight, on hard-backed chairs, weighed down by a king’s many burdens. But sometimes, he would come, and sometimes just to sleep, and in his sleep, more often than not, he would turn and fold himself over her, his breath hot against her neck, his arm a warm anchor. She cherished those nights, and never questioned him over it, though she wondered at it too. Wondered if he knew, or dreamt of it, of what he was doing, before he turned away, before he left at first light.

By now her maidservants had been and gone, gently dismissed, with only the request that they bring her some dry toast and lemon water to drink. _It will pass,_ Marya had told her, when she returned from that hushed corridor, and sat with her for a long while. _Soon enough you’ll forget you ever felt so wretched._ Sansa shook her head at the recollection, feeling with fury the heat of tears just behind her eyelids.

She pulled herself into the far corner of the bed, to the side where Stannis would sometimes sleep, drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

“She doesn’t understand,” she said, voice quiet in the empty bedchamber. _What reason will he have to hold me, to touch me now? My duty has been done._

*******

**_Where these sorrows sighed_ **

**_hot about the heart — hunger tearing within_ **

– The Seafarer –

*******

Outside the cave mouth, they had awoken to a metallic world. The smooth unflawed slopes of snow on the mountains across the valley were iron. The deeper moon-shadows had a tinge of steel blue to them. Otherwise, there was no true colour. Everything was grey, black, or sharp silver-white. Inclined sheets of ice gleamed like tin. Hailstones, millions of them, lay grouped up against each rock and clustered in snow hollows. In the quiet of the valley, the air smelt of frost and minerals.

As he put his heels into his horse, leading on his men, a tired sadness settled over him. His horse trotted sharply, tossing its head, as if invigorated by the brisk weather, its hooves breaking through the ground’s icy crust to the softer snow beneath. In this cold, the air felt as though it was being tightened in a vice. It took your breath away, sucked moisture from your skin, burnt like fire. His hands stiffened with it as he held the reins, as he thought of the girl on the side of the mountain with her dead, frozen papa, with no mother to return to. _This life is a fight that never ends and misfortune follows us everywhere._

Ahead of them, Shaggydog bounded towards the trees. As they rode further into the heart of the wolfswood, the soldier pines and sentinels wore thick white coats of snow, with icicles draping the bare brown limbs of the broadleafs. Sometimes, he found himself looking at the forest in a different way. Sometimes it was no more than the trees that provided timber and firewood; that hid the earth’s nakedness. And then sometimes, like now, it was a vast shadowy presence that he felt he could never see the end of; it might, for all he knew, have not just the length and breadth to lose himself in, but also an immeasurable depth, or something else altogether.

“Your Grace?” a low voice called out, disturbing his thoughts; it was a northern scout he had sent ahead of him, not long gone. “There are deer tracks coming over from the west, they look to be on the move.”

They slowed their horses, hurriedly dismounted, and tied their reins to the nearby trees, bows strung over their shoulders and arrows in hand. As they began to stalk westward, the sharp scented silence that surrounded them felt as deep and endless as the sky. A gust of wind now soughed through some of the forest’s snow-laden branches, sending a curtain of white flakes drifting to the ground. Beyond them lay a clearing.

As they crouched down low amongst the frozen brush, a great stag stood not fifty yards away. It raised its head slowly, as if its massive, many-pointed antlers were a ponderous burden. Snow sprinkled its nose and brown hackles. As they watched, the wolf pup grappling for a better view, the stag swayed its antlers slowly side to side. The creature must have stood close to seven feet, its legs sturdy and its neck as stout as a tree trunk.

Eyes transfixed, his exhalations rose as steam in the cold air and clouded his vision. Holding his breath, he lifted a gloved hand to his lips before reaching slowly for his bow, and then aiming for the deer’s heart.

There was only the moment of impact, the animal staggering as if a great weight had come crashing down upon it, and then its fall. At the sound of it, birds flew from the treetops, a scatter of wings, until silence descended once more.

It was not long after, when he put his hands on its still-warm side that he truly understood its size. Its antlers could have held him like a cradle, and his arms would have failed to circle its barrel chest. _A giant of the forest._ Indeed, it had to weigh more than a thousand pounds, and that meant hundreds of pounds of good, fresh meat. Food in bellies and hunger thwarted.

As he knelt in the bloody snow, his men suddenly so jovial around him, he wondered at the kind of welcome he would receive when at last they returned to Winterfell. Would his wife smile her slow, reluctant smile at the sight of their approach, at the sight of their bounty? He was loath to admit it, but it captivated him nonetheless; that tiny beginning at the corner of her mouth, how it would rise up to possess her. _Foolish man, you think to gift her some lump of butchered flesh? That she’ll kiss and embrace you for it?_ He huffed irritably in the cold air, gritting his teeth as he rose, casting aside his thoughts like rocks in the snow.

“It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever seen,” murmured Rickon, now close beside him. “Bigger than even Shaggydog…”

The boy was quiet, reverent as he ran a hand down the antler bone. This was an aspect of the wolf pup he hadn’t seen. The sulky smirk was gone and his boyish face beamed up at him.

“We’re to go home now?” he asked, blue eyes so innocent.

Come evening, he stood over a blazing fire, scorching his face, whilst a mug of stewed pine needles warmed his frozen hands through his gloves, the feel of it a painful comfort. Yet still he felt the cold, deep down, as though ice were forming inside him, floes of it cruising his core, pressure ridges rising up through his arms and legs, white sheaths forming around his bones. _Aye, it will be good to be home and out of this cold_ , he thought absently, holding up his tea so that it bathed his face with hot, moist steam. It would hurt all the more when it was gone, but that was his weakness. Too weak to resist, too weak not seek the warmth, too weak not to think of her even now, of her eyes and her face, of the bed-warm heat of her body when it pressed against his.

*******

**_One may easily sever_ **

**_what was never bound fast,_ **

**_our mutual riddling_ **

– Wulf and Eadwacer –

*******

The snow and the clouds had combined to produce a peculiar light, a pallor in the dusk that made it seem colder. She paused her step along the empty corridor to press a palm against the windowpane, the heat from it melting the frost and leaving behind a clear print. _The cold is getting stronger_ , she mused, picking up her feet once more, the castle’s granite walls bathed in rippling torchlight.

Although the days were short and the sun low, there was a compensatory feeling in the air. She hoped it augured the hunting party’s return, though of course, she could not be sure. Walking on, she thought of her mother, how she would sometimes pace and wring her hands, waiting for her father to return from his duties as Warden. She thought of the wives of soldiers, woodsmen and hunters, drunks and adulterers, all waiting long into the night. _Why is it always the woman’s fate to pace and fret and wait?_

When she made it to her chambers, she sat herself down with her sewing and tried to lose herself in the stitches. Harder still, she tried not to look out of the window. Tried not to think of him, but that always proved near impossible these days. The trouble was that she could never truly read the currents that moved beneath his skin. And it was him alone, no other person confounded her so. For he would look at her sometimes with that peculiar blank intensity of his, which spoke of great concentration, yet gave no clue as to its subject, or even its tenor. It was only the habitual lines of his face that made you assume anger or irritation were behind it; though she hoped it was not so. But perhaps she had lulled herself into a false sense of security. He might care for her, but surely it was only a small kind of care, an extension of a held fast duty. He could not feel what she felt, nor think of her as she thought of him.

She must have fallen asleep in the chair, as she woke with a start, back stiff and with tears drying on her face, making her skin itch. Her sewing now lay on the floor, having slipped down from her lap. The softest of knocks sounded on the door, but it did not surprise her as much as it might have: she had been thinking of her husband, so perhaps it seemed inevitable that her longing should at last be answered.

She moved to pull the door open with a gasp of joy, tiredness loosening her emotions, words gathered to tumble out at him, along with tears. But only the darkness yawned back at her, until Shireen’s flickering candle came into view, the young girl wide-eyed and bouncing slightly on her heels.

“They’re back—Father and Rickon, they are back!” Her voice was a hurried gust of wind, rushing with excitement; her habitual shyness dispelled.

“They are in the yard?”

“Near enough, I should think. Devan spotted them from Bell Tower, making for the Hunter’s Gate. I came as soon as I heard.”

At the news of their imminent arrival, she frantically donned her winter cloak, Shireen helping to wrap her in a thick scarf as she slid on her fur-lined gloves. When previously the evening had been hushed and calm, now the castle walls rang with the sounds of people bustling, readying, footsteps rapping against the stone floor. She felt a little overcome with a peculiar trembling and a singing in her ears. As folk began to cluster in the frozen yard to nod and smile and chatter, she could not register anything beyond a confused buzz of noise and the fact that her eyes, though burning hot, remained completely dry.

The dusk light now fell in long low rays across the riders making their way in from the Hunter’s Gate. They had been travelling for hours already, so the sight of home and such a welcome no doubt came as a relief. Aye, even wrapped in layers of wool and skin coats lined with fur, she knew their limbs would still be numb and long past aching. Some of the men staggered as they slid off their horses, then tried to stamp some circulation back into their legs, the heat from their huffing misting the air around them. 

“You’re not going to believe this!” Rickon hollered.

He hurtled towards her and she caught him in her arms, her heart swelling at the sight of him, at the feel of his sharp bones just beneath the skin. His embrace tightened around her waist and then he released her, taking a slight step back.

“The king shot the biggest damn deer you ever saw!”

She found herself now looking for her husband in the yard. An immediate strong pressure rose around her chest, as though she were suffering from croup; an unpleasant stricture that made it near impossible to draw a breath. He had begun striding towards her, his face grim and determined, but he looked tired too. She could see him differently now that he was closer: the texture of his skin, weather-beaten and pale, the shadows beneath his eyes, his black eyelashes, the grey in his beard, the intensity of his stare.

She was certain that she was trying not to, but she found herself looking back into his eyes for a second that lengthened and grew into a minute. Neither of them said anything. Perhaps it was the cold, but his face now seemed flushed, the distance between them shortened.

“You are well?” Though his face didn’t change, his voice was rough.

“Yes. And—and yourself?”

She looked into his storm-blue eyes as he nodded, trying to put her meaning into her own, so that he would know what she meant, know that she had missed him. And for the briefest moment he seemed to pause, to take stock of her standing there, face pink with the cold, her gaze beseeching. 

At last she looked away, feeling lightheaded, and he moved past her with a broken stride, as though both with a jerk, snapping that unspoken thing that stretched so taut between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reunited at last :D They both want each other and care for each other so bad...if only they'd realise the other feels the same way ;)
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – Morgan Liddle, known as Middle Liddle, though not in his hearing, is the second son of Torren Liddle. The Liddles are a northern mountain clan that inhabit the high mountains north of the wolfswood. In A Dance With Dragons, Morgan is one of the clansmen to join Stannis' army and participates in the retaking of Deepwood Motte, in which he almost slays Asha Greyjoy. Later, during the march to Winterfell, he apologizes to Asha for calling her a cunt in his battle lust, but not for trying to split her head open with an axe...what a considerate guy.
> 
> – So the factual/real life basis for the great stag they find is the Irish Elk, also called the 'giant deer', which is an extinct species of deer that is one of the largest to ever live. Although abundant skeletal remains have been found in bogs in Ireland, it wasn't exclusive to Ireland, e.g. its territory extended across Eurasia to Siberia. Nor is it closely related any of the living species that we know today called elks, e.g. the European elk, known in North America as the moose. So that's why it's probably more accurate to call them giant deer. Indeed, it's been suggested that they're closely related to red deer or even fallow deer, both of which exist in the British Isles. DEER FACTS! I just wanted a big ass deer coz Baratheon vibes, ya know? 
> 
> – Pine needle tea has been a traditional wild food for centuries. E.g. the native inhabitants of the colder regions of North America made tea from various coniferous tree species – the vitamin C content of oranges pales in comparison, though it varies from tree to tree. It also has plenty of other health benefits :) Technique-wise, it's best to steep the needles in hot water, rather than boil them, as that's the best way to retain their vitamins. 
> 
> – Poetic quotations from Old English: The Wife's Lament, The Seafarer, Wulf and Eadwacer.  
> – Poetic quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Hávamál (The lay of the High One).
> 
> Comments, as always, are much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	4. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for last chapter's comments :) This chapter took way longer to write than I anticipated! Mainly because I got just over halfway through with it, then decided to cut most of it and start again... But I'm so glad I did. It needed the literal temperature dial turning DOWN, and the angst/UST turning UP! Anyway, here it is!
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_The raven wheeled,_ **

**_dusky, dark brown. The gleaming swords so shone_ **

**_it seemed as if all Finnesburh were in flames._ **

– The Finnesburh Fragment –

***

Snow had begun to fall not long past dusk. First just a few flakes here and there, and then the air was filled with falling snow. It settled thickly on the shoulders of the evergreens that dotted the courtyard below; the limbs of a young spruce bent beneath its weight. No moon shone that evening, but several stars were out, like wolves’ eyes, glaring.

“I didn’t have a chance to greet you out in the yard, Your Grace. So tell me, how was the hunt?”

He turned away from the unshuttered casement.

“Cold, and longer than I would have liked,” he muttered darkly, walking across to the great elm table; one hand now spread, leaning heavily upon it.

In the quiet of the chamber, the flames of the solar’s hearth sounded like a horse galloping. One long, bright tongue, cracking like a whip.

His Hand laughed lowly, reclining slightly in his chair beside the fire.

“Aye, it suited me well enough not to join you, I shan’t deny it.”

He huffed irritably in reply, as he looked down intently at the dark grain of the wood, at a myriad of parchments, scrolls and tomes. Picking up a quill, he turned it slowly over in his hand, as if examining it.

“Yet better this than an ashen wasteland, you must agree.” The quill became still and he looked up at Davos beneath a heavy brow. “When I first came north it was in defence of its people, and later the realm itself, but now, as the capital lies in ruin, its survivors scattered, I find I cannot go back—I cannot offer them aid. The kingroad is not clear, northern ships freeze in their harbours, and all the while it grows colder by the day.”

The bitterness went out of him then, as well as the fight, replaced by an all too familiar fatigue. Beyond the East Gate, the rutted kingsroad had long since vanished, lost amidst the fields and rolling hills. You could see it from high upon the castle’s battlements, past the small stone houses of the winter town: a vast white expanse, emerging just as the morning sun burnt through the mist and cloud, like the edge of an endless white sea. To the west, Winterfell and the wolfswood, but ahead of you another country: waves of snow marching to the horizon of the north, south and east, glittering, white and huge, spreading out for miles and miles, beneath a weak winter sun.

“A raven came from High Garden a few days ago,” his Hand said at last, all trace of joviality now having slipped from his face. “A band of King’s Landers travelling along the roseroad stopped there briefly, headed for Oldtown. I took the liberty of writing to the Hightowers on your behalf.”

“How many?”

“Perhaps two dozen, at most. The rest…” Davos grew silent.

The unspoken words pressed down on him, twisted in his hand like an edged sword slipping, cutting to the bone. _I will not forget. I will not forgive._ He nodded, jaw tight. Snow was still falling, drifting down in silence from a dark, windless sky. In the hearth, he could hear embers settling in their grate, and some distance off, outside, a wolf howling.

“Off with you then, I shan’t keep you from your wife any longer.”

As he rose to his feet, the Onion Knight seemed to hesitate for a moment, before catching his king’s eye. “Nor I you.”

Stannis straightened, his stare sharp.

Bleak as the day was, there had been a growing tension in his heart as his hunting party had neared the Starks’ ancient seat; he was nearing home, or as close to a home as this stilling, stalling winter would allow. He had felt it in the touch of thin air on his skin, in his longing to see the plumes of hearth smoke, rising up, only to become lost amidst the darkening sky. But more than that, much more than that, he had felt it in his restlessness to see _her_.

“Goodnight, Lord Hand.”

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

***

**_Three times they burned the one thrice-born,_ **

**_often, over again: yet she lives still._ **

_–_ Völuspá _–_

***

Lying in the extended gloom of the morning, she had wondered at the slow coming of the light; how it seemed to stagger through the casements, as though weary from travelling such a long way. _The deeper into winter we delve, the more it struggles to rise._ In the night she had woken with chilled toes, wishing for a warm leg to press against, for warm arms to hold her close. But he had not come; though returned, he had not come. No trace of him there, no faint impression on the bed, no lingering scent of leather and pine boughs.

Sometimes, if he had been, she would slip her hand through the folds of her skirts to find and press the bruises he had left there, to feel the start of pain across her skin. Bruises as echoes of his touch, proof of his hands, his hips against hers: the exultant exhalation, the clamber of their limbs in the dark. Throughout a dull-eyed cycle of too many nights slept alone, waking to nothing but worries and starving mouths, piling up like snow, those hidden bruises suggested something more, something else. They were all she had of his to keep for herself. Until they faded. Until he came again. All those weeks, all those nights, rotted through with hunger. A hunger that wouldn’t abate.

Struggling from her bed, as soon it had grown light, she had felt a strange disquiet. The clouds that hung over the mountains and hills, the vaporous mist too close to the ground. The smell of iron in the air. All morning, as wool-wrapped ladies tailed her like sheep, she had been thinking of the people who had lost themselves up on the mountains. Of a story Old Nan had once told, so long ago now, about a goatherd girl who had gone missing in a sudden snowstorm during a round-up, how they hadn’t been able to find her bones until many moons later, miles away from where she had last been seen.

_Morbid thoughts for a morbid girl._

Out in the castle’s main courtyard, the sky was cloudy and dim, but the cold air, and the strong smell of kitchen smoke rising, seemed somehow sympathetic to her melancholic mood. Indeed, it was a relief to be outside, to be free of the watchful, though well-meaning, eyes of her women.

Free of them, yes, though not of her thoughts. Aye, all it took was the closing of her eyes and she could draw herself back — back to the very moment of her return: the clouds that streaked the sky, like tattered banners, grey, white and torn; the heavy tread of her dying horse; the weary slump of her body, thin and faint as a tidemark, eyes squinting against a feeble sun.

Coming back, it was as though the shape of everything that had once been so safe and familiar had irrevocably changed. Burnt and broken in her absence. But she had changed too, she knew. Like a stone that has been dragged free from its rockface, she had been battered by the push and pull of too harsh a current and, returning to the rock that had shaped her, now found herself perhaps too fractured to locate the space that once enclosed her.

 _Mayhaps I am just the same as that lost goatherd girl,_ she thought now, ice crunching beneath her booted feet, as she moved carefully through a maze of shovelled out trenches. _Searching for home, for myself...lost out there in the snow._

Inside Winterfell’s cavernous kitchens some of the cooking smoke had cleared, though the fire was still high. As she stepped inside, the heat of the room prickled against her cold cheeks, the warmth returning to them. Without word or question, a huddle of wildling women beckoned to her forwards. Myrtle, gaunt and grey-haired, was setting a pot of water down to boil, whilst Rowan struggled to strain a heavy pitcher of deer blood through a thin muslin cloth. Taking off her gloves and furred cloak, Sansa moved swiftly to help her, flinching only slightly when red flecks hit her face as it slopped.

Here there was no time for private thoughts, as each had their individual tasks at hand: Willow measuring out salt and saltpetre to be mixed for brining; Squirrel and Holly stringing up shoulders and legs of cured mutton to dry over the peat fire; Frenya stirring suet and oatmeal into the now strained blood for black pudding. A swell of happiness murmured through Sansa’s heart as she worked beside them, chopping lemon thyme and winter savory into small piles to be added to the bloody mix. _Here I can forget who I am._

But that peace was short-lived. Elsewhere inside the kitchen, the air was thick with the animal smell of boiling fat and kidneys, frying for someone’s midday meal. Her husband’s perhaps. At the drifting smell of it, her nostrils flared. The bitter taste of yesterday’s bile suddenly stirring in her memory, clamping her stomach. Like a trapped bird released, she all but ran out of the kitchen, several voices calling after her, servants and wildlings alike.

Outside, the cold drizzle settled on her face like a blessing. With her head on her knees, she sat crouched in the shadow of the looming building, the rain running down, undisturbed, from temple to cheek.

“Milady?”

“Forgive me, I just…I needed some air.”

Rowan nodded, easing herself down to sit beside her, pushing a mop of red-brown hair out of her eyes as she did so. For a little while, they just sat, watching the flickering of the fires that blazed along the tall stone battlements; faint and futile, vain attempts at driving away the gloom.

“I better see what those girls are doing now,” her companion said at last. “I won’t be surprised if Holly or Squirrel have strung themselves up on the rafters, instead of the meat. I might discover them smoked through.”

A soft thud sounded from across the yard, carried over to them by the wind: someone in the smithy spreading out the deerskin and sheepskins to dry.

“Go on back to your fierce husband, Sansa Stark.” The rain ceased, replaced by falling snow. “You’ll only catch your death out here.”

*** 

**_Wondrous is this stone-wall, wrecked by fate;_ **

**_the city-buildings crumble, the works of the giants decay._ **

– The Ruin –

_***_

The wind and drizzle had picked up again, and as it pushed through the tight weave of his clothing, he felt his sweat-soaked skin grow cool and begin to itch. Blunted swords slammed into shields, their collisions faintly ringing amidst the rising squalls. With an outstretched hand, he helped the knight opposite him stagger back to his feet, the lambswool of his breeches dampened and stained with muddied snow.

“Go,” he called out, voice carrying above the wind. “We’re done here.”

Since morning, the weather had gradually worsened; there was ice in the rain, and the wind that now blew, buffeting their cheeks, was like a wolf nipping at their heels. Huddled in their hooded cloaks, breath fogging, the few reluctant men that had joined him needed little persuasion to disperse. Stannis watched them go, clenching his jaw and returning his sword to its scabbard; damp leather whining against the cold steel.

Into the very teeth of the wind, he began to stalk across the yard, wincing at the harshness of its bite, shoulders hunching as he refastened his heavy fur cloak. Around him, plumes of grey smoke snaked up from the rebuilt kitchens and reroofed barracks keep, the battlements and crenelations crowned with yesterday’s snow and hanging with icicles. To look at it now, it seemed as if all colour had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. _Stark colours. Sansa’s colours._

The sudden thought of her ran through him like a fever.

What did Sansa Stark know of struggle and death? Protected and sheltered all her life, never knowing second best. A child, a woman. She was not like him. She had not felt the weight, the burden, of duty come close to breaking against her back. She knew only of the tree of life. She had not seen, had not been forced to look beneath, to its twisted roots, pawing at stones and corpses. _All that, and more, I believed of her, once. But now no longer._

His cloak flapped loudly from his shoulders, as he allowed himself to search his mind for her face as he’d first seen it, all those moons ago. How she had squinted against a feeble sun as she’d looked back at him, cautious and untrusting. Her hair, several inches of auburn from the roots, the rest a tangled, muddied brown. _The girl in grey on a dying horse._

How could he truly recall the first moment of meeting her, when the hand he had felt press his own was merely a hand? It was impossible to think of her as the stranger she once was to him. He could picture the way she had looked, and recall the weather, the play of light across her pale, drawn face, but that virgin moment was impossible to recapture. He could not remember not knowing her. He could not think of what it was not to love her, in his halting, helpless way. To look at her and realise that he had found what he had not known he was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving him into the night.

Aye, with each day that passed, since necessity and duty had made them wed, he had grown warier and warier of drawing close, of being named a fool. Aware of his lapses, and yet unable to curb them. That was why, in part, he had sent himself away. To the wolfswood, to its pine groves and sunken holloways. But that was an absence that could not be maintained.

Up above, the sky’s icy droplets had silently transformed, now falling wet and heavy, already beginning to cover his footsteps. Cold hands flexed in his gloves as a chilling wind blew past. In the wolfswood it would be deeper, and deeper still along the kingsroad. White and endless and no escape.

It was from the snow that he saw her approach, for he knew it was her from the first instant. The hood of her cloak had been knocked back by the same wind that had just run through him, her braided hair now uncovered, copper bright amidst a sea of grey and white. At the sight of her, he halted in his tracks, his feet weighed down like stone.

“Sansa.”

Hearing his call, her downcast eyes abruptly rose, taking his stare and turning it back on him.

“Husband,” she answered, voice breathless against the wind.

Pink cheeked and tentative, she came then to his side, his blood jerking with a beat like pain as she brushed aside the black wool of his cloak to slip her arm through his. Whatever hapless words he might have said to her now melted like snow upon a furnace. He could not speak with her so close, could only regard her warily, pensively, through narrowed eyes, as they began to walk together, through the icy dung out trenches, towards the castle’s beckoning warmth.

Soon enough the doors of the Great Keep loomed in front of them; rough and new-made, to replace the ones that had burned, a pair of spearmen hunched under thick fur cloaks guarding them. Stepping inside, she did not immediately depart from his presence, instead she dropped his arm, turning stiltedly to face him. For a short silence, they stood there, eyes locked, whilst a draught crept through the otherwise empty antechamber, making the torches gutter.

“I am glad you are home,” she uttered quietly, white teeth worrying down upon a reddened lip, her blues eyes bright and searching.

The breath he released in response was ragged; a hint of feeling threatening to break through. Looking at her, he was aware of the rise and fall of his chest. _My wife is beautiful_ , he thought, and not for the first time. Yet still he did not answer, could not fathom what to say. For like a mummer who knows only one role, one mask, he could not stop himself from searching for deceit.

***

**_Speech or silence: decide for yourself;_ **

**_all wrongs are already measured._ **

– Sigrdrífumál –

_***_

The snow was coming down heavier than ever when they left for the Great Keep. Hastened by the cold, they walked quickly through the courtyard; her husband’s eyes turned stoically ahead, whilst her own lingered wistfully upon the ruins of her mother’s sept. This was not the castle she remembered from the summer of her youth. In such a place as this, time was not deep, instead it rose to the surface, already and always around them; lying all about her less as layers, more as drift. _Here the past lingers on,_ she thought, wrenching her eyes from the burnt beams and ashen rubble, buried beneath the snow. _It haunts me like a ghost._

With the wind fallen flat and white flakes descending, the courtyard held a deep, almost conscious silence, in which their feet seemed to crunch the snow with startling loudness. Above them, several small clouds drifted through the sky, so that when one of them passed before the moon, the world’s filter seemed to shift. Snow steadily falling, her gaze drifted to her husband. First his face was silver and the ground was black. Then his face was black and the ground silver. And so it continued to switch, from dark to light, as the clouds passed before the opalescent moon.

Aware of her eyes upon him, Stannis abruptly turned to meet her gaze, narrowing his own stare, as though a sudden burst of feeling had seized him. For one wild, fearful moment she thought he appeared angry, though there was no reason why he should be. Against the backdrop of a changeful evening’s sky, his eyes seemed to have almost no distinction between iris and pupil, all were darkness. Indeed, his was often a grim face to behold, a face that could cloud with frustration and anger, or even with the hard control that he exerted over these. Yet it was a face to trust. Aye, Stannis Baratheon was not a man one could easily love, certainly not a man to easily like, but a man to either hate or worship. You either fought him, or followed him. But it had to be one or the other; once you came within reach of him, you had no peace. _I have no peace._

The way he was looking at her now was so concentrated, so full of an intent and meaning she could not place, that it made her heart jump. At last, as though scalded, she tore her eyes away, feeling light-headed. She felt his stare leave her then, yet the fluttering, beating of her heart, like that of a bird’s, remained. Indeed, her breathing had been short ever since he had knocked on her chamber door earlier to escort her, face so grave and oddly searching.

In truth, part of her had been surprised to see him there, since he had left her before so abruptly, a gust of air blowing through the silence of the antechamber as he went, tearing the flames along from the torches, till shadow and light went reeling. He hadn’t said a word, had given her no reply, yet still she remembered how he had stared at her, his breath coming harsh and ragged, as though he had run with her from the yard, rather than the stiff walk it had been.

With her side now pressed to his, she was aware of that stiffness once more, aware of the firmness of his bicep through her glove and his sleeve. That quiet, steely strength. He had come to her dressed in black lambswool breeches and a quilted doublet beneath his heavy cloak, yet somehow, even now, he looked as stiff and uncomfortable as if he had been clad in plate and mail. _He thinks this feast to be a farce, a mummers’ show…a waste of meat and candlesticks._

Inside the Great Hall of Winterfell the air was hazy with firelight and heavy with the smell of roasted venison and freshly baked bread. Its dark granite walls were draped with tall banners: the snarling grey direwolf and the flaming crowned stag. In the flickering light, her husband’s face was an impenetrable mask of shadows. His stride was straight-backed and determined, as he led her up to their seats. Catching Shireen’s shy welcoming look, Rickon’s toothy grin, the smiles of the many Seaworths, she tried to mirror them, to smile herself, yet it was only a passing, fleeting thing.

As her husband brought them to a halt, she felt numerous eyes upon them, watching him, as she did, free himself of her hold and turn to face her. He moved then to release the clasp of her sable-edged cloak, gloved hands brushing away the snow on her shoulders, momentarily resting there, almost feather light, before slipping the garment free of her shoulders completely.

Beneath it she wore a gown of woven ivory silk, embroidered at the neckline and cuffs, with cartridge pleats at the back; simple in its decoration, the bulk of the dress’ embellishment came from the overlapping strands of White Harbour pearls that crossed its front, held in place at her shoulders by a pair of silver broaches, cast in the shape of direwolves. She felt warm in the heat of the room, her forehead aching a little from the tightness of her braids, yet she suppressed the urge to untie them, to let her hair run free like rain down her back. _I am Sansa Baratheon tonight_ , she reminded herself. _I am their queen. There is no one else I can be._

Gloves were slipped free of and Stannis’ own cloak removed, before she accepted his proffered hand, the broad palm warm beneath her bare fingertips, though the touch was all too brief. As they sat he did not look at her, indeed, he had hardly looked her in the eyes since their arrival. Yet from her lowered gaze, she saw him steady his hands, flexing them briefly against his knees, his posture so very straight and still.

After all had been seated, it was with a slight jerk that the king seemed to remember himself — he stood abruptly, cup in hand, causing the hall to grow silent and hushed. Sansa watched him, now unabashed, as the flickering flames from the torches and tallow candles spread, lighting the planes of his face; a face already, it seemed, she knew as well as her own.

“Winter has come, as the Starks always foretold,” he began, voice deep and commanding, _the voice of a king_ ; issuing forth a murmur of _ayes_ throughout the hall. “Let us drink to a short one, to our continued peace, to those we have lost and those of us who remain.”

“ _Aye! To the king! Aye! To the queen! Aye! To the North and the Starks!_ ” men and women alike roared together, their fists and cups banging down loudly upon the long plank tables; Umbers, Cerwyns, Manderlys and more, all united, beneath the banners of Baratheon and Stark. It was then that the feasting began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those of you who may have wanted them to get down to it in this chapter...forgive me. But stay tuned for next chapter ;)
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – I somehow ended up down a wiki rabbit hole researching meat preservation for really a very brief scene in the grand scheme of things, lol. Anyway, in Winterfell's kitchen we see Sansa helping with the making of black pudding (a type of blood sausage), using the blood from the slaughtered great stag. Blood puddings are considered to be one of the oldest forms of sausage. While the majority of modern black pudding recipes involve pork blood, this has not always been the case; sheep or cow blood was also used, and one 15th century English recipe used that of a porpoise(!), in a pudding eaten exclusively by the nobility. The one Sansa helps to make is based on a Yorkshire black pudding, flavoured with lemon thyme and savory. 
> 
> – We also see legs and shoulders of cured mutton being strung up above a peat fire, this is basically a reference to a type of meat preservation called reestit mutton, which is a salted mutton traditional to the Shetland Islands. Reestit mutton was traditionally prepared as a way of preserving mutton so that it could be eaten during winter. It is related to similar Scandinavian/Nordic methods of drying meat, probably owing to the fact that the Shetland and Orkney Islands saw an influx of Norwegian settlers during the 8th and 9th centuries, and their lasting legacy is still felt there. If prepared correctly reestit mutton can remain edible for up to four years!
> 
> – Maybe if you've read/re-read A Dance With Dragons recently you might have recognised the names Myrtle, Willow, Frenya, Rowan, Holly and Squirrel? These are the six spearwives that accompany Mance Rayder to Winterfell on a mission to free "Arya Stark" (actually Jeyne Poole). Mance disguises himself as "Abel", a singer, and the six spearwives are his mother, wife, two daughters and two sisters who perform the instruments with him. Later on they are seen by Theon Greyjoy working as washerwomen and they help him and Jeyne escape. I was doing a re-read to refamiliarize myself on the current state of Winterfell and just liked the vibe of these gals so thought I'd include them here rather than make up new characters. Kudos to anyone who recognised them :)
> 
> – Sansa's gown at the feast is more or less my attempt at describing [ the dress worn by Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth.](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D4B8shoPuCI/VxlKM_YbY_I/AAAAAAACS4Q/mi8l-q6Ep2EVSAVKtkxtDRxpIfefWe5uACLcB/s1600/lady%2Bmacbeth%2Bfilm%2Bcostume.jpg)
> 
> [Here are the cartridge pleats on the back.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/05/ea/9305ea478aa34bdb7544a67d9c82b7a3.png) And another, [closer look here. ](https://cinemabravo.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/marion-cotillard-and-michael-fassbender-_-macbeth.jpg)
> 
> And here's a close up of the [overlapping strands of pearls,](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/01/be/2d/01be2d4d4fcb1b0c60cd2808ac6891bc.jpg) which I mention as being from White Harbour — possibly a wedding gift from the ingratiating Manderlys...
> 
> – And last but not least:
> 
> Poetic quotations from Old English: The Finnesburh Fragment, The Ruin.  
> Poetic quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Völuspá (The prophecy of the seeress), Sigrdrífumál (Sigrdrífa's lay).
> 
> Comments, as always, are much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	5. Salt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments from last chapter — hope you enjoy this one ;) ;) ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_Over the salt-streams you will find your husband,_ **

**_the prince who waits in hope of your arrival._ **

– The Husband’s Message –

***

Neither of them spoke. There was only the scraping of knives on plate metal, marrying with the crackle and sputter of the great hearth at their backs. She tried to eat, to taste the sweetness, blood, charcoal and salt, but could not force herself. 

Beyond the high table, men and women sat crammed knee to knee along the benches, so tightly packed that the servers had to squirm between them. At last, the warmth of fires and bodies once more filled Winterfell’s Great Hall — the return of the king’s hunting party had everyone longing to finally open their mouths, for food and drink and talk, after all those weeks of gritted teeth. Rows and rows of torches burned bright against the walls, as shadows danced high against the hammerbeam roof, the flames a soft marine ripple, amidst the ebb and flow of a hundred drunken voices.

Clasping her pewter cup, she let the lemon water dampen her parched lips, running down her throat like a river, only to settle like a stone, cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach.

Compared to his men, Stannis drank little, and said less. He would listen whenever someone rose to make a toast, sometimes even nodding a curt acknowledgement, but otherwise his face might have been made of stone. It was only then that she could meet his eyes, when the cups would rise and the thumping of fists would soar, and only for the briefest of moments, as if the full force of his stare would wither her. Aye, every face turned away, every silence held, every chance to speak not taken, pricked at her like nettles; the absence of his touch, rather than the presence, stinging her the most.

_If only he would soften, if only he would look at me kindly, speak to me…then I could tell him. If only he would weaken, then perhaps I could be strong._

She had heard it said that at the feasts attended on Dragonstone there had been no loud laughter, no raucous shouting such as marred the dignity of other men’s feasts; Lord Stannis, as he was then, did not permit such. _But Winterfell is not Dragonstone,_ she thought now, watching with a sad smile as her brother rose from his seat at her right, auburn hair glowing in the torchlight, to pull Shireen from her place beside her father.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Stannis frown, having watched as she did, the young Lord Stark practically drag his daughter to join those now dancing a riotous northern jig; Vale knights stumbling over their feet as clan-girls tittered and spun, to the rhythm of lute and drum.

There was a slight hush when her husband abruptly stood, and for the scantest moment, some small, _silly bird_ , part of her thought he was about to do as Rickon had done: seize her hands in his and pull her to standing. But he did not. Instead, she saw the tightness of his jaw as he stood, the gritting of his teeth as he turned resolutely to his Hand. Wordlessly, the two men left the dais, departing for some private corner, or perhaps leaving the feast all together. Sansa watched him go, chest tight and heart thrumming, thinking of how he would rather be anywhere than here; restless beneath a hundred watchful eyes, and hers.

“You look as pale and pure as a bride tonight, your Grace.”

Barbrey Dustin had taken up the seat her brother had just vacated, eyes dark and steady, as though made to measure and not to admire. She was dressed in black, as ever, though her bell sleeves were lined with vair, and her gown’s high collar was stiff and white, like bone against the black.

“A true Stark for all these Northern lords to simper over.”

Her last words were a lash, but Sansa did not deign to answer back in kind. Instead, her eyes sought out her brother’s form, as he weaved between the packed lower tables, the little princess’ hand in his, their blue eyes bright in the firelight, as burly hands reached out to slap his shoulder or clang together their pewter cups. _They are both just children…children of the summer._

“You do not weep like the last one. The _false_ one, I should say.” 

She bristled slightly in her seat, but otherwise remained silent, her gaze fixed steadily ahead, though her throat felt tight and painful.

As the torches flickered, lighting up the threads of the hanging banners, she wondered if she was right in letting Lady Dustin speak to her as she did. It was no secret that her position amongst them was precarious—her husband’s toleration of her rested solely on the continued train of food and fodder from Barrowton to Winterfell. Aye, placating words of eternal fealty were all well and good, yet still it was known, from Last Hearth to the Neck, what little love Barbrey Dustin held for House Stark.

_She sees me as my mother…like Petyr. She does not see me for myself._

“I’ve offended you.” The woman’s tone was somewhat pleased, amused even. She took a deep sip of wine, her dark eyes sparkling. “Do forgive me.”

A brief flicker of anger at last passed over Sansa’s face, her gaze finally returning to Lady Dustin’s. But when she spoke it was in a soft voice:

“You do not offend me. You just have nothing that I wish to hear.”

The Lady of Barrowton laughed at that, sharp and almost feral, her measuring stare now turned oddly approving.

“You know, I thought you such meek little thing at first, more of the south than the north…but it seems you have some wolf in you after all.” As she spoke, the torchlight made her eyes seem as if they were afire, glowing amber amidst the dark. “Yes, no wonder your husband lusts after you like he does. I can see it now. I may be too long a widow, but still I remember what it’s like to inspire such a look. I daresay not even a son will keep him off of you.”

Sansa felt something like a blush steal over her whole body at those last provoking words; the answering look in her eyes an incredulous question, the thump of her heart so hard she was sure it had to be visible through her bodice. But before she could even think to respond, the lady was already standing, sweeping up her bell sleeves and departing with a swirl of black skirts. 

“Are you well?”

With a start she turned then in her seat, hand pressing to her breastbone at the sight of the king, her husband: gone and now returned, standing so tall and solemn above her. _Am I well? I hardly know…_ She took in her breath sharply, as if to answer, but instead could only blink dumbly back at him, taking in the searching, concerned crease of his brow, the faint lines that spread from the corners of his ink-dark eyes, gleaming blue in the wavering torchlight. She couldn’t remember the last time she had touched his face, if ever, and the thought ached like loneliness in her chest.

“Yes, I’m just…”

A sudden, starving impulse overtook her, and she reached out to touch the back of his hand, where it hung loosely at his side, tracing with one finger the curving course of one vein, from knuckle to wrist. She felt rather than saw him stiffen, yet still she took his wrist in her hand and squeezed it, hard; the firm feel of him beneath the leather and wool making her long to touch the rest of him.

“Forgive me, but I…” An immense wave of tiredness was threatening to engulf her, the longing to lie down, to shut herself away, suddenly becoming as imperative as a physical pain. “I feel I must retire.”

Her grip on his wrist slackened, releasing him, a chastened blush faintly mantling, as she moved to rise from her seat, ready to slip away _._ But as soon as she moved, so did he. Without hesitation, without thought, one hand took hold of her arm, grasping it tight, as though he thought her about to fall, or _run away._

“Let me,” he murmured, and she found herself nodding.

***

**_— wolf-slopes, windswept headlands,_ **

**_perilous paths across the boggy moors, where a mountain_ **

**_stream_ **

**_plunges under the mist-covered cliffs,_ **

**_rushes through a fissure._ **

– Beowulf –

***

The sky above had been steeped in black, the moon waxing crescent, bone-coloured, about a third full, its light just bright enough to see by. Fallen leaves had lain about the wide white trunk of the heart tree, drifts of red and brown, now drifting through his memory. Roosting birds, unidentifiable in the dark, rose from the ground with flaring wings, their eyes like jewels, their stony _krekking_ the only sound he could remember.

And he had stood, there beneath the heart tree, clad in black leather and dark furs. The stars myriad. Unsmiling but waiting, watching. Watching the wisps of fog that had stirred round her feet as she’d walked towards him, candles flickering beside the wandering path and back amongst the shadowy trees, catching copper in her hair.

_Who comes before the gods?_

Here and there a torch had burned hungrily, casting its ruddy glow over the faces of the wedding guests; faces he could not now recall. 

_Who gives her? Who takes her?_

He had undone the cloak about her shoulders, heavy white and bordered in grey fur, had replaced it with one of deep black, threaded with gold.

_Who gives her? Who takes her?_

And he had kissed her, had felt the stutter of breath against his lips, the tight feel of her hands about his neck, as he’d swept her up, to stride out through the mists and snows grown deep, a pink-cheeked wife in his arms.

 _Perhaps that is where all this trouble began_.

***

**_I can speak it —_ **

**_what I endured in misery,_ **

**_after I was grown, both new and old,_ **

**_none greater than now._ **

– The Wife’s Lament –

***

The room was still as a cave. Her maid had recently turned down and plumped up her featherbed; a great large thing decked with dove-grey woollen blankets, embroidered by her own hand, and swathed in white furs and fleece stuffed pillows. Beyond it, a fire had been lit in the hearth, its light breaking and scattering in the bronze looking glass beside her vanity. In the mirror’s firelit surface her husband’s form showed tall and shadowy, an unreal thing of the firelight and darkness, shifting as the flames moved.

“Will you stay, my lord?” she asked hesitantly, settling her sable cloak over the high back of her vanity’s chair.

From the Great Hall all the way to her bedchamber, her nerves had felt stirred, her limbs unstrung and her heart unguarded. She should have been thanking him for his silent escort, but instead could only think, so close to her bed, of the hollows at the base of his spine when he undressed, his hand clasping her breast, his ragged breath against her neck.

“No.” He had followed her inside, but now stood quite still in the centre of the room, with the firelight leaping round him. “I won’t—I,” he paused, his voice coming out in a strained murmur: “You are tired.”

His stare was somewhere beyond her face.

Perhaps he was nervous of her, although why, she could not think—he had been married before, after all. _Or is he waiting for some sign from me? Some sign that I truly want him here?_ Her thoughts hummed in the waning candlelight.

From three paces away he seemed taller than ever. He towered over her to the ceiling beams. The flickering hearth had the effect of leaching some the harshness away from his features, making him seem different somehow: softer, less composed, or perhaps it was just a trick of the firelight. _Sometimes I worry I’ll never know what is true from what is false…_

“Goodnight, my lady.”

With a slight bow of his head, he was going. He was going and he had not touched her. She lurched forward, half desperate, half a step, then another.

“You…you do not have to go.”

She wanted him to stay. She wanted to be naked with him. Wanted him to want her as Lady Dustin had said he did. Wanted to feel him, to see him, all of him, for him to fill her up, to make her whole. But in that moment, standing there, the hearth-fire leaping, she felt like an aching void, curdling with frustration.

“I must return to the feast.”

“You would rather the Great Hall than your wife’s chamber?”

Her words came out an in impetuous rush, causing him to halt abruptly in his determined path towards the door.

He turned slowly round to face her, his voice cracking suddenly with temper: “Do not—do not bandy words with me.”

His words rumbled through her, akin to the first stirring of the current under frozen ice. It was like lifting a heavy weight, to keep her eyes level on that fierce blue glare, her pulse jumping. But she kept it. _I am not afraid._

“I’m not. I’m not—”

“And do not _lie_ to me!” he interrupted, voice harsh. “I’ve been made a fool of often enough in this room. I won’t suffer it again. Not tonight.”

And there it was—the hint of feeling threatening to break through. His body was taut, face thunderous, though there was a slight tremor in his hands before he clenched them; a tremor that he could not hide fast enough.

When he spoke next, he was quieter, voice rubbed raw:

“Can you not recognise a kindness when I offer it to you?”

She stared at him, unable to speak.

In her breast, her heart was thundering, as though in rhythm with the quick patter of icy rain now sounding against the chamber’s closed casements. She glanced at his neck, to the place where the skin of his throat vanished under his collar. This distance between them made her dizzy, the lack of touch, the need to correct it. Blood rushed in her ears, her composure loosening.

_I can’t help it, I can’t help it….I am continuously falling into you._

Like a sleepwalker, she drifted towards him—she had no memory of taking steps—trembling slightly, to place the palm of her hand against his cheek, to finally touch him where she wished; stroking the muzzle of a half-tame wolf. He stiffened, but then something in him seemed to give way, to break and come undone, allowing her to catch a glimpse of a lonely boy, shouting into the darkness to scare away the night.

“I don’t…I don’t see it as a kindness,” she said, at last.

“ _Sansa,_ ” he breathed, cautioning, dark eyes so fathomless.

But with that touch the bolt had struck, and now the bow was unstrung. He lifted his hand to cup her cheek, mirroring her own, the rough pads grazing her flushed skin, drawing her in close.

And then his mouth was against hers.

***

**_Men and women be born and raised;_ **

**_we two shall never be torn apart_ **

– Helreid Brynhildar –

***

He had stood with all his pride and dignity round him like a robe, but beneath it his body fretted like a horse that feels both curb and spur. Standing there, trapped between her and the fire’s blaze, he was more wretched than he had ever been. Even as he’d spoken all his denials, even as he’d refused the look in her eyes, he had watched, rapt, as the light beat round her, flowing up her ivory gown, the colour of weirwood bark, light and shadow rippling upwards in waves like moving water, or the wind over grass. And he knew he was caught.

_It feels like I’ve always been helpless to you._

Burnished with repetition, the memory of her bare beneath him was more than exquisite, more than painful; it had the power to move him like the act itself. It left him shuddering and emptied in the privacy of darkness. Aye, during the wolfswood hunt he had asked himself, back flat against the frozen earth, if it had it really been like that? If she felt it too? It had taken him so long, but he knew now: they were interwoven threads from the same cloth.

_I would unravel without her._

And so he held her close. He kissed her, sought her, his tongue growing abandoned. In his arms, she felt so frighteningly, thrillingly _real_. Willowy limbs but fierce in her grip, her hands about his shoulders. With a slight whimper, fluttering low in her throat, she pressed herself against him; the strands of pearls that crossed her bodice rustling, only to become muffed by his chest.

“Sansa…”

His hips stuttered, cock hard beneath his breeches, and she pressed closer still. She moved her hands from his neck and slid them down, fingers fumbling, shaking, as she began undoing the ties of his jerkin. And all the while, he leaned into her, took her face in both hands, kissing her lips, her neck, her cheekbone; his chest rising, falling, beneath her soft palms.

Half mad with want, he shucked off his heavy cloak and loosened jerkin, let her pull his undershirt up, lifting his arms over his head to assist her. He let her take him apart, accepting now that she was the only one who could truly put him back together. The only one to make him feel this hot despite the cold.

“ _Please_ ,” she pleaded, palms grazing the hair on his chest, stroking his sides, feeling the ribs beneath his skin, the silvery scars from past battles narrowly won. Hands threading through her hair and tugging on her waist, he took her lower lip between his and sucked.

In the firelight her eyes were dark, copper braids loosened, coming undone as he started to ruck up the heavy skirt of her gown, eventually lifting it, as well as her shift, above her head between rough kisses; strands of pearls and silver broaches pattering against the ground, and then becoming silent.

His hands spanned her bare waist, flexing then falling, reaching for her breasts to knead them, to brush his thumbs over the peaks. With a half bitten moan, she pushed into him, her eyes closed and cheeks flushed, in only stockings and smallclothes. He wanted to touch her everywhere.

_Gods and pride be damned._

He bent and rubbed his upper lip across her nipple until it stiffened, then took it delicately in his mouth; her legs bending, body waning beneath his touch. He took each provoking peak into his mouth, dusky-tipped and tasting of _her_. She overwhelmed him completely. One of her hands was rubbing his straining breeches, whilst the other plucked frantically at the fastenings. At the sound of her gasps and his own groans, the chaotic feeling inside of him tipped and shifted, enough to cast away any last remnants of hesitation.

He moved back up her body to kiss her. Her lips, her tongue; she tasted him back eagerly, she dragged him in, her kiss as insistent as a question, his words failing, only his breathing answering. The wind and rain outside rose to a howl, but he may as well have been deaf to it. All that mattered was the sound of boots thudding and belt clattering, the careless shuck of breeches cast aside.

Warm hands caressed his shoulders, ran up and down his arms, until the backs of her long legs hit the bed. In a rush he had her laid down amidst a mass of pillows and furs; he had her lifting her hips to let him peel off of her smallclothes, her lower lip caught between his teeth.

Bent knees softly cushioned, he raked his hands up her still stocking-clad legs, soothed their nervous tremor, as his face pressed into the soft, sprung flesh of her belly. Her hands slid down from his neck, running over the sharp ridges of his shoulder blades, down to the hot saddle of lower back he as lurched upwards, his mouth once more branded to hers.

“I need you, _please_ ,” she whined between kisses, head tilted back.

He lowered himself to lie fully against her, the hot, blunt heat of him butting up against her, feeling her slick and waiting.

“Here?” He rocked his hips against her, a maddening drag for the both of them, earning a frustrated moan.

Blushing hotly, she pulled at him almost roughly, guiding him between her thighs. Then, no sooner was he sliding into her, into a heat that unfurled beyond the boundaries of his skin, no sooner had he felt rather that thought, _Home_ , than he was gliding beautifully and inexorably towards the precipice. Watching the arch of her neck, feeling the walls of her cling to him as he withdrew, the storm that seized him was violent and unstoppable.

He shifted away slightly, breath unsteady, grasping a hold her thighs, ribbon-edged stockings now flush against his chest.

He thrusted into her, as hard as he could, heard her cry out, saw her clenched fists, twisting in furs, didn’t know what they meant, was unable to stop had he wanted to. He just gave himself up, was hurled upon her shore.

“Is this—is this what you wanted?” he rasped, almost taunting. _Do you understand now? Do you see what you do to me?_

“Yes,” she answered, head tossing back. “Yes, yes, _ah_ —!”

In and out, the relentless ebb and flow; he heard her moans, saw himself in her hooded eyes, inscrutable mirrors, as dark as the Shivering Sea—as deep and unpredictable. He saw the water shining at her temples, felt her cunt seizing, her chest heaving, voice calling out, gasping, almost drowned:

“ _Stannis_.”

With a stuttering of his hips, a guttural shout on his lips, he spilled into her; shipwrecked, dashed against her rocks.

There were tears streaking her face, he found, when at last he could see and realise something outside his own body. Worried, he lifted himself off of her, and shifted to his side. He stroked her hair, kissed her, suddenly unable to stop caressing her. He kissed her temple, her cheekbone, her jaw, the skin beneath her ear, her unsteady breath fluttering against his neck. He kissed the side of her mouth, her lips, tasted the salt.

“Sansa?” he said, hoarse and low in the waning candlelight.

She looked at him now, seeming dazed and far away, then shook her head, sniffled and smiled through her loosened hair. Silently, tentatively, she moved to lie, full length, on top of him, resting her elbows, her hands lightly grazing the sides of his face. He could feel the weight of her breasts on his chest, the heat and heft of her body, her foot feeling for his amidst the tangled furs.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, as the wind howled against the casements, and they lay quietly. Her skin velvety and warm, as necessary as sleep. Her lips grazed his shoulder and his eyes found hers.

“It was as though I had left my body behind. I had no end…” she paused, voice hushed, shaking her head. “It was…”

He released her hair from its unkempt, coiled braid and laid it across her back, smoothing down the wild copper strands. He loved the feel of it: thick and strong: a rope on which you could climb to safety. He wound the ends around his right hand.

"Was it good?”

She smiled. “Yes, it was good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For their sakes, and ours, I think it's a pretty good thing that finally happened, lol. I don't tend to write smut from Stan's pov, so I hope it still seemed sexy and in character...
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – Poetic quotations from Old English: The Husband's Message, Beowulf, The Wife's Lament.  
> – Poetic quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Helreid Brynhildar (Brynhild's Hel-ride).
> 
> I always like to have a playlist when I'm writing and for this chapter [Ben Howard's Depth Over Distance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GA460PtRE) was a main contributor. Especially that 3.21 minute mark...oof. I sort of rediscovered him last week and now he's all I listen to at the moment — there's some really great live performances of his on youtube that are worth a browse :D
> 
> Comments, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	6. Speak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with the smut folks...enjoy ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

***

**_Long I’ve slept; long I’ve slumbered;_ **

**_long are the misfortunes of men._ **

– Sigrdrífumál –

***

When she awoke the next morning, it was with a start, her heart beating fast in her chest. The stomach-turning sinking from her dream held on for a moment longer, as though she had stepped into bottomless wet sand, and try as she might, she could not get back onto firm ground. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, willing her nausea to subside, willing instead the memories of last night to flood forward, to wash her clean — the memory of how they had knotted themselves together, how he had held her afterwards, how he had stroked and unbound her hair.

And yet the space beside her was empty.

Sansa struggled to free herself of the bedding that engulfed her; thick blankets of new wool and pale furs that smelt of cedar-wood. Some time before departing, unseen hands had tucked the furs tightly round her, wrapping up her naked body like a swaddled babe. The hearth too, had been lately laden with fresh wood and was now smouldering away steadily, as opposed to the pile of whispering embers it usually was by this hour. At the sight of it, at the acknowledgement of what it meant, something swelled and then tightened fast within her chest, prickling at the corners of her eyes as she slipped from the bed, a grey fur thrown over her bare shoulders.

Why was she trembling like this? Her knees felt as weak as marrow jelly and she almost wished to lie back down. Her breath shuddered through the air. Old Nan had always believed dreams meant something. She had built up her beliefs on old wives’ tales and the secret language of weather; saw the bleeding eyes of the gods in the habits of clouds, the swooping of ravens, the gnashing teeth of ewes. _Had she seen all this? All that has passed, all that we’ve become…_

Dried seed still lingered on the inside of her thighs, as she treaded softly across the room. She had expected him to understand her from the start. She had so wanted him to understand. Aye, last night, she believed that some invisible membrane between Stannis and herself had at last been broken. He had finally begun to act, to respond, and the thought that she might draw him closer still, might feel at ease enough to speak of the life that was growing inside of her, a life that was both hers and his, had set something quickening within her.

But perhaps it was too much to expect that they could speak together using the same tongue. _He should have stayed. I should have asked him to stay._

It was a recent self-indulgence she didn’t often permit herself, but sometimes, in quiet, solitary moments, she would sit in one of the high-backed chairs beside her hearth, her eyes closed, her arms crossed against her breast, and she would imagine holding her babe there — their trusting warmth against her body, their little head smelling of milk and washed linens, their skin softer than flower petals. She remembered watching her lady mother with Rickon, when he was very small, cradling her swaddled son in her arms. She remembered how she would distractedly touch her lips to his forehead, little pink face lost in a furred hood. She remembered a time before everything changed, when passing by him in a corridor, as he chased after his siblings, her mother would tousle her youngest’s hair, then sweep him up into her arms and kiss him hard along his chin and neck until he squealed with glee. From these memories, painful as they were, she eventually came to understand what it was she craved: the boundless permission — no, the absolute necessity — to hold and kiss and love without reproach.

_If only he had stayed, and I would have told him everything._

The curtains had been drawn back, letting in a grey and wintry day, breaking in the embrace of more wet and snowy weather. It snowed most days in the north now, clouded in a thick fog and a cold that refused to lift, even as the winter sun brought what little light it could into the world. Outside her chamber’s west facing window, she could see a small courtyard below, where a colonnade framed a square garden, at the centre of which a ruined fountain played — in silence, she thought, till she saw that the cascade was solid ice.

_It will take more than one night to thaw the frost that lies between us._

At the sound of her maid’s soft knock, she turned her gaze away.

***

**Not all my dreams bode well,**

**yet each of them must I tell.**

– Gísla saga Súrssonar –

***

He had left his wife’s chambers just as the first bar of morning light had broken out across the clouded winter’s sky. He had left with a pounding head. Even now, he could not stop thinking of Sansa’s pale face, her low breathing in the dark. Last night she had wanted him to stay, but come morning did that sentiment remain? _I don’t know. I don’t know._ He had fought off the urge to return to her, to stalk through the corridors, strides urgent, past the busy huddles of servants lugging pails of water and armfuls of pressed linens. _But for what purpose? To what end?_ No doubt winter had a way of engendering false intimacies, perhaps that was all there was to it. _Warm bodies in the cold night. Lust, but not love._

All these thoughts boiled restlessly within him, and he must have been more in his own world than he realised, because someone took him firmly by the shoulder and spoke loudly:

“Stannis, are you well?”

He turned away from the fire with a start, shirking off his assailant’s grip with a scowl. His Hand stared back at him; brown eyes full of questions, gloved hands raised in supplication. For a long moment, he could only blink back at him, face drawn and eyes wearied, until his rising discomfort bade him speak:

“There’s been a raven from the Gift. I’d have you read it.”

His words were clipped and crabbed, a clear attempt at avoidance. But he could not explain something he did not know himself. 

Davos continued to regard him probingly, but he could not now meet his gaze; could not bear to be found out, to be laughed at, even by a friend. Instead, he cast his shadowed stare past his shoulder towards the solar’s iron-studded door, as though silently willing himself to travel through it, or likewise remain quite still. Apprehension and Need were waging a familiar war within him.

But it was Need that won out in the end.

He found her in the dairy, of all places, churning butter in solitary silence. No glass filled the casements here, only dried sheep’s bladders that had been pulled across to serve as panes, their dull surface allowing little light to penetrate the low-beamed, narrow room. He felt his heart turn over and over and over as he watched her, his footfalls unheard, his presence unnoticed.

“Does a queen not have servants for such a thing?”

His voice had been quiet, yet still it startled her, causing her to turn round in her seat with a jump, her cheeks flushing pink.

“I wanted to do it. I asked and they showed me how.” She regarded him carefully. “Queens or dairymaids…winter has a way of simplifying things.”

He almost smiled at that, thinking grimly, _aye it does_. But she had turned back round to the churn, raising the plunger, and pushing it through the cream. Her hair was braided again today, copper bright and coiled at the back of her head, revealing an elegant neck. He drew in a breath, the air cold in his lungs.

“I am interrupting you then.”

“No,” she shook her head, her movements briefly faltering, hesitating. “But I’d rather not stop until the butter takes.”

He leant silently against the doorframe as she continued to raise and drop the plunger. After a moment he became aware of her breath, fast and hard in the small room. It seemed intimate somehow, the rhythm of the plunger and the sound of the quickened breathing. He felt the back of his neck warm. Eventually, a thud could be heard inside the small barrel, and Sansa stopped and deftly strained the butter from the buttermilk. He blinked as she washed it, then formed and slapped the paddle, skilfully forcing out the remaining liquid, until at last the shaping was done and she covered it with muslin cloth.

She turned round to face him again.

“You do that well.”

“It wasn’t always so.” His wife lowered her eyelids and stood humbly with folded hands. “But I like to learn, to help where I can.”

He nodded, an awkward jerk of the head.

“Why…why are you here, my lord?”

Her eyes had risen to meet his. He stood rooted. He was conscious of her every look, how still she was, how watchful and waiting. He stared back at her tensely, a beast snared. Suddenly restless, he made several strides into the shadows at the side of the room, then back again into the dim afternoon light. 

“Come,” he said, voice rough, hand beckoning.

“Come where, my lord?”

“Somewhere that isn’t freezing,” he muttered.

His hand fell. The silence came back, and they held one another’s gaze for a long moment. His eyes slid to the curve of her cheek, to an escaped strand of hair snaking down past of her gown’s high collar.

“Why didn’t you stay?”

Her words were spoken so softly, almost as a whisper.

“ _Sansa._ ” His voice scraped in his mouth, like wood against the saw.

She took a step towards him. There were tears in her eyes.

He was on the brink, he knew, of reaching his hand across the space between them to touch her gently on the sleeve. Or no, not gently: to seize her wrist and say, _Stop this! Do not taunt me! Do not lure me into confession…_

“Before I woke this morning, I dreamt that I was walking barefoot in a lava field.” Her face was upturned, skin pale, her blue eyes glittering. “It was covered with snow and I was lost and scared — I didn’t know where I was, and there was no one to be seen. In every direction there was nothing but rock and snow, and great chasms and cracks in the ground. My feet were bleeding, but I had to keep going — I didn’t know where, but I was walking as fast as I could, almost running. And just when I thought I would die from fear, you appeared. You gave me your hand. We kept going in the same direction as before — we didn’t know where else to go — and even though I was still terrified, I had your hand in mine, and it was a comfort.

“But then suddenly, in my dream, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet, and my hand was wrenched out of yours, and I fell into a chasm. I remember looking up as I fell into the darkness. I remember seeing the ground close back up over my head. It shut out the light and your face. I was dropped into the earth, buried in silence, and it was unbearable, and then I woke up. I woke up and you _still_ weren’t there. You weren’t there. You’d left before I woke.”

A tear had slipped free from her eye, catching at the corner of her mouth; she dashed it away with a hand.

Tentatively, he closed the distance between them, taking up her hand in his. He stared down at it, pressing her slender fingers, her knuckles. He drew a long breath.

“Do you hate me for the kind of life I have given you?”

“ _No_ ,” she said, startled, and his eyes shot up. “Gods no, how could I?”

“You are unhappy.” The words tore at him, like a plough dragged deep through a frozen field. “ _I_ make you unhappy.”

He stroked the skin on the back of her hand. He was aware of her smell: the sweet scent of fresh buttermilk, the woody fragrance of rosemary soap. He fought off a sudden, reckless compulsion to draw her fingers in his mouth. He shook his head and exhaled a ragged breath.

Unaware of his thoughts, Sansa gently pulled her hand out of his grasp, and he reluctantly released her, his eyes lifting to meet hers.

“I am _unhappy_ when you do not stay, as though our—our coming together were a transaction.” Her voice trembled and almost broke. “I am _unhappy_ when you won’t look at me, won’t speak to me. I am _unhappy_ that Arya and Bran seem lost to me, never to be found, that—that Jeyne died before I found her, that for Jon I am not the sister he longed for, that sometimes—sometimes Rickon will look at me and call me mother. But I…I am not unhappy that I married you. I only wish—I only wish you’d _love_ me. Love me like I—like I—”

His stomach knotted up until something seemed to snap and wretchedness coloured every new thought he had. The next moment, she was in his arms. Her forehead a cold stone against his neck; his hand in her hair, pressing her to him.

“I do _._ I do love—” His breathing was hard, his heart _beating, beating._ “Gods damn me because I know I don’t deserve to, but I do—I do love you.”

It was as though his heart had swelled to bursting point, threatening to choke him. He could not speak another word, had said all he could manage. Sansa let out a quiet sob then and he tightened his arms around her. He felt her forehead graze his jaw, smooth skin against bristled beard. She shifted, reaching up slowly in his hold, eyes closed and lashes damp.

His head inclined, her lips blindly searching, and he slid into the heat of her. With a low moan, his arm wrapped tight around her waist, as his other hand touched the softness of her hair, felt the cradle of her head, the movements of her jaw. She pressed towards him, closer, nearer, her small hands gripping his shoulders. It was not one kiss followed by another, but a slow, deliberate process of dissolution, undoing him almost completely. He craved her beneath him, then. He craved the breath of her: the quickening inhalation and the warm pressure of her mouth. Her smell, her skin, the slippery buck of her hips.

_Gods damn me._

He drew away with a groan, the sound lingering in the air like a cloud of ash over a volcano. “I’ll not bed you in the dairy.”

Unexpectedly, she laughed, her teary eyes bright and lips parted; she suddenly looked mirthful, altered. For a moment he thought he glimpsed the girl she used to be, the girl before the woman, before the wife and queen. It was almost painful, how much he longed to see her smile again.

***

**The good dream-woman**

**led me, the poet, to sleep**

**there, where soft beds lay.**

**From my mind this will not fade.**

– Gísla saga Súrssonar –

***

Their clothes lay strewn across the rushes: thick hose and her lambswool gown, furred cloaks, and his leather jerkin, all hastily discarded. He was kneeling, kissing her all over: her throat, her breasts, her ribcage, her stomach. He was so slow and gentle, it made her sigh with a tender, impatient pleasure. Across the room, in its stone-carved hearth, the firelight flickered, casting long shadows against the tall granite walls, the evening dark creeping in, the candles in their brackets softly wavering.

Beneath their bare bodies, her featherbed creaked. He was lifting and moving her knees, shifting into the space between them, hot palms against her goose-pimpled skin. Then, before she really knew what he was about, he was putting his mouth to her, to that soft, complicated place between her legs. The heel of her foot brushed his side, and her hands fisted furs. _What if it doesn’t work?_ A panicked, pleasurable anxiety washed over her. But his tongue was soft, oddly teasing, unhurried, sometimes barely moving, but undeniably there.

By herself, she never made a sound. She had become adept at keeping her limbs anchored, still, so the secret wave would break over her body and no one would know. Now, she wanted him to know. At some point, lost in the contrast between wet tongue and rough beard, she had forgotten to be anxious. She was adrift, cast loose, rocking easily. Her breaths were tattered gasps, her chest constricting then exhaling. She could barely speak, could hardly think.

“ _Don’t stop_ ,” she gasped.

His fingers slid between her legs to join his mouth. They entered her with deep, tender movements, until he could feel as well as hear her breathing become shallower and more rapid, her heartbeat quickening, her thighs tensing beneath him. Little vixen cries were calling out, in a voice she was surprised to find was her own: sharp, desperate, and rising. _Ah, ah, ah._

It was sooner than thought when it came for her, engulfing her gloriously, his fingers still buried deep and her insides quaking. Beneath him, her back arched and her body lifted, her fists clutching at air. She panted harshly, her heart going like mad — a wild, rebellious beating.

Between her legs, Stannis gazed up at her, dark eyes storm-tossed and black beard gleaming damp. He held her gaze as he withdrew, as he sucked on wet fingers. Then, with limbs heavy, he clambered back up the bed and she pulled him to her, her skin rosy and slick with sweat. Beyond them, the fire was still raging, popping, crackling in its grate. Her hands slid up the warm expanse of his back, following the ridges of his spine, her nails gently grazing. She could feel him against her hip, hot and reassuringly hard, his chest slightly heaving.

Slowly, and all at once, his head dropped, his mouth catching hers. She kissed him back with more abandon than before, tasting herself on his tongue, the briny tang, her own boldness exciting her. With her throat a hollow cave, she drew him in, his urgent thrust making her gasp and buck, her hands tightly clinging. Strong fingers carded through her unbound tresses and soon the friction mounted: the hair on his chest rubbing, sending tremors of pleasure down from her breasts, the advance of his hips, steadily stirring, his beard and mouth reddening her neck, her jaw, her lips.

Before long, he was moving faster, delving harder, their bodies slapping in a heated, hurried rhythm. Buried in her neck and close to her ear, his breath was catching, hissing. He pulled away suddenly then, drawing up her legs to hook around him, the angle within her shifting, hitting upon something deep.

“Please, _please_ ,” she begged, encompassing him, taking him inside her body to keep, digging her nails into the swell of his backside. 

Stannis groaned in reply, half-choking back her name, and she felt his forehead, slick and hot, rest briefly against her collarbone. He then drew himself back, almost to his knees, her lower half lifting, a hand on her waist, anchoring. With the following thrust, her eyes screwed shut and her head tipped back. The wave from before was rolling back in, little tremors spiking, all building, coming suddenly, blessedly, to the fore.

Both crumbling like sand, he fell as she did; Stannis gasping, half collapsing, clutching at her breast as though it might save him. He shuddered and moaned in her ear, and she was filled with a feral triumph. She could feel a pulsing inside her, amidst the haze of her own bliss, and then, when he was still, panting, lying heavily upon her, his heart thudding wildly, next to hers.

As he rolled away, slipping out of her, Sansa followed him, moving to lie with her head in the crook of his shoulder, his arms around her, her leg folded across his thighs. Something more than warmth flowed into her then, as he drew up the furs to cover them, below the level of thought. It made her feel safe — the conviction that he tended her, loved her, would never let her come to harm. She spread her hand across his chest, feeling his ribs, his heart beneath her fingers, rising and falling. _This is everything_ , she thought, _right here._

***

**_I hear the runes S and R,_ **

**_EA, W and M join in an oath,_ **

**_that he is waiting in that country,_ **

**_and would keep faith for as long as he lives_ **

– The Husband’s Message –

***

Embraces brought their own oblivion, they made him forget himself, forget everything in favour of her. They had made him seek avoidance, had made him build up so many barriers between them. In truth, he had never before been in someone else’s power like this, not truly. He had never looked at a woman and not seen the distance, the difference between them, the clear lines that divided his life from theirs. Indeed, he had fought against his tethering, had resisted this closeness brought about by necessity and Selyse’s untimely death. But really, in the end, all that it had given him was just another kind of trapping.

_To go back, to right past wrongs, past faults…that is not a thing any of us are granted. To wipe away what later does not suit us and make it the way we wish it. All I can do is go on. Try to do better._

With his arms wrapped around her, Sansa had plummeted into a heavy sleep, like falling off a cliff; now lying on her back, one arm flung over her head in a gesture of absolute trust. Sometimes, just looking at her felt bolder than even the most intimate caress. On his side, his chest pressed to her shoulder, he let his eyes roam over her lovely, curving body, relaxed in its pale skin, the gentle rise and fall. Still, these things felt shockingly new: the shared nakedness, the weight and press of another body, the feel of another’s heart, the sound of her breathing, the bewitching heat and softness of her skin.

He trailed fingertips across her collarbone: flushed pink with warmth, copper hair falling at the hollow of her throat.

He was loath to stop looking at her, but supper’s hour was drawing in. Indeed, past the chamber’s undrawn curtains, the going sun chucked a vast spread of red behind the ridgeline. A horizon of red light parsed into shafts by standing trees to throw pink in streaks across the dips and valleys of snow. A low moan signalled the onset of more winter winds.

Absently, he imagined the gale moving through the trees in the wolfswood, the godswood, even the haunted forest, through all these places, and many more like them: places that were separated from one another by walls and by boundaries, but that were joined across space at that time by their wildness in the wind. _We are fallen in mostly broken pieces_ , he thought, _but the wild can still return us to ourselves_.

When he looked at Sansa’s face again, he saw that she had opened her eyes a crack. She gazed up at him, as though she had anticipated his presence, but still seemed somehow surprised. A ghost of a smile flitted across her face.

“Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me,” she whispered.

“Why?” He touched his hand to her face, running his fingers along her jaw.

“All week, all the time you’ve been gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about you…like this.” Her face was flushed, eyes low-lidded.

“Well then,” he said, thumb against her cheek, “seems I’m wrong too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing speaks "medieval realism" to me like endless food preservation moments apparently. Did I for real just make butter churning kinda sexy? Uh, yeah, and YOU'RE WELCOME. lol
> 
> I swear, I keep thinking I'll write MAX 1000 words for each pov...but...they gotta say what they gotta say! 
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – The dream Sansa has is inspired by a dream Agnes Magnúsdóttir has in Hannah Kent's Burial Rites. For real, possibly my favourite book of all time, its so dark and moody, and just beautifully written. A book that's always in the back of my mind when writing. 
> 
> – Poetic quotations from Old English: The Husband’s Message.  
> – Poetic quotations from Old Norse-Icelandic: Sigrdrífumál, Gísla saga Súrssonar. 
> 
> Hope you guys liked this chapter :D Comments, as always, are much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


End file.
